Email volume for the first quarter of 2011 is up 21.4 percent over the same period last year, according to data from the Email Campaign Archive (ECA) database. The increased volume represents a continuation of a trend in recent months.

March promotional email volume was 18.8 percent higher in the first quarter of this year versus the same quarter in 2010, with 18,265 email promotions recorded in the ECA compared to 15,374 last year. The ECA is powered by the Who’s Mailing What Archive, a Target Marketing Group (TMG) product. (All About eMail is published by TMG.)

Other items to note about March email promotions archived include the following:

1. The average word count in March was 380, down 5.5 percent from March 2010. This is a continuation of a trend towards shorter email messages.

2. Thursday was the most popular day to send email promotions in March (19.4 percent of the total), followed by Tuesday (18.7 percent), Wednesday (17.8 percent), Friday (15.9 percent) and Monday (15.9 percent), Sunday (6.4 percent), and Saturday (5.9 percent).

3. Between 8 a.m. to noon EST was the most popular time for sending promotional email in March (35 percent of the total), followed by noon to 4 p.m. (25.5 percent) and 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. (16.5 percent). The one-hour window that saw the heaviest volume of email sent in March was between 10 a.m. and 10:59 a.m. (10.5 percent of all email sent).

4. The most repeated subject lines in March were:

25% Off Your Order, 30% Off Your Online Order

35% savings with the online catalog, plus new Spring decor

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